Twitter bad student of social networks regarding the spread of fake news?

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According to a recent study, the Covid-19 pandemic would be very conducive to the dissemination of false information. If social networks more or less brilliantly try to stem the phenomenon, Twitter would get the worst results.

Last February, the World Health Organization (WHO) pinpointed a second pandemic accompanying that of coronavirus. Called the organization's infodemia, it relates to disinformation and, if fake news is not new, it will once again take hold on social media and instant messaging applications. According to a study carried out by the Reuters Institute of the university of Oxford, the microblogging network Twitter would be the most fertile ground for their propagation.

Lots of work for information verifiers

The study's writers explain that it was based on 225 erroneous information published in English, and analyzed by the international fact-checking network (IFCN) and Google’s fact-checking tools. According to them, they have faced an increasing amount of misinformation around the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of English-language fact checks having “Increased by more than 900% from January to March”.

Analysts also distinguish between disinformation and misinformation. As such, 59% of the erroneous information in the sample concerned misinformation, with a reconfiguration of the facts, where “Existing and often true information is twisted, twisted, recontextualized or reworked”. As for disinformation, and therefore the complete fabrication of information, it represents 38% of the sample.

Another interesting piece of information, misinformation from politicians, celebrities and other public figures represents 20% of the sample, but would represent 69% of total engagement on social media.

59% of publications deemed false continue their lives on Twitter

While social networks take action against much of the information found to be false by fact checkers, by removing it or attaching various warnings, there are, however, wide disparities. In this game, Twitter acts as a bad student with 59% of the sample remaining available or not wearing a label providing information on the relevance of the information. On YouTube, this proportion is only 27%, and on Facebook 24%. The researchers also point out that "Each false declaration may exist in many slightly different versions, and the analysis relates to the first information identified".

Some lines of reflection can be identified concerning a supposed “laxity” of Twitter. Information sharing is particularly rapid there, even if the pandemic seems to give more verve to the platform, which for example has deleted erroneous information shared by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Note that Twitter has been implementing a new policy against disinformation related to the coronavirus pandemic since March 18. A late app that may explain some of the disparities, especially since the study started in January 2020.

For their part, Facebook and YouTube have in recent years implemented more stringent publication control measures, as well as labels to identify sensitive content and alert about the relevance of a source.

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